Dual II is the second of a two-exhibition experiment that considers the unavoidable cross-readings and interpretations of the duo-show format. The exhibition features new sculpture, drawings and video projection by Erin Shirreff and Colin Zaug.

In a series of new works tentatively titled Flat Stories from Ordinary Holes, Erin Shirreff critiques our tendency to project our own psychological agendas onto the world around us. By presenting us with “aggressively simple objects and situations with the aim of triggering trance-like boredom or dumbfounded curiosity,” we are left to face our own longings, anxieties, and expectations. For the exhibition Shirreff presents an eight-hour split screen video/claymation, Day is Long, Night is Longer, and Nothing is Longest, that stars a laptop, a burning candle, and a ceaslessly morphing and turning mound of clay. Avoiding overt references such as rotting fruit or a skull, this contemporary vanitas vanitatum, ostensibly about hours spent in the studio, provides a site for contemplation on the finite and how we choose to whittle away the hours we are granted.

Colin Zaug uses common objects and materials—plaster, casters, chicken wire, wood—to produce stark stage-like sets, that on one side present an alluring surface but closer inspection might reveal a messy heap of household items or crude construction. For his sculpture for Dual II, Zaug borrows a signage technique reserved for casino billboard advertisements in the desert: the front of the sculpture is covered in hundreds of floating reflective discs that flutter with the slightest air circulation. This seductive public front shields (and hides) both a structural support and an intimate seating arrangement for two. The piece draws attention to our complicated relationship to our environment, the strange ways choose to navigate it, and warns against the hazards of overcomplication.

THE ARTISTS

Born 1975 in Kelowna, B.C., Erin Shirreff studied at the University of Victoria and later completed an MFA at the Yale University School of Art. She has shown in the Canada, the U.S. and Europe and has attended residencies in Hallein, Austria, and Dawson City. She currently lives and works in New York.

Colin Zaug was raised in Cerrillos, New Mexico, where he currently resides. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design and the University of Victoria, where he completed his MFA. Zaug has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Mercer Union (Toronto), Exit Art (New York), and LACE (Los Angeles).